


Where the Heart is

by Oreramar



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Family, Gen, Home, Post Season 1, may be sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-24
Updated: 2016-06-24
Packaged: 2018-07-18 00:45:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7292710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oreramar/pseuds/Oreramar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The wormhole scattered them at random. There were thousands of galaxies, millions of solar systems, countless worlds where any one of them could have come out. The odds of any of the Paladins finding themselves in a familiar place were astronomically unlikely...yet still technically possible.</p><p>Or: Lance discovers that going home may not be as easy in reality as it was in his head.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where the Heart is

Wormholes were never a picnic, but this one seemed worse than any other Lance had ever experienced - maybe, he thought later, because not only was time and space compressing around him, but the Lion was in an uncontrolled tailspin at the same time. At the moment he wasn’t feeling nearly so analytical. He was too busy screaming his head off, screaming which continued even after the wormhole spat him out practically on top of a glowing blue and white planet.

It wasn’t until he’d pulled his Lion upright and away from the oncoming atmosphere that he stopped, and in the ringing silence his voice left behind, he realized he couldn’t hear the others yelling anymore either.

“Guys? Come in?”

He waited a few seconds. Nothing.

“Shiro? Allura, Coran? Guys, if this is some kind of weird joke, it’s not funny!”

A few ticks. They were longer than seconds - more time for someone to give up their stupid game and respond.

“Hunk, Pidge! _Keith!_ Someone tell me you’re there, or you can hear me, or _something!_ ”

A screen opened up on Lance’s dashboard, glowing blue text filling it. He recognized the first couple of symbols - he suspected they meant ‘error’ or ‘warning’ or ‘something bad has happened, sorry,’ given how often they’d popped up when things went wrong. Usually they were red and accompanied by alarms, though, so he supposed that this was a less urgent, more generally annoying sort of problem.

“Let me guess: our radio’s damaged or we’re way, _way_ out of range or something.” Lance stabbed a finger at the holographic screen, clearing it away. “Well that’s just great. Where are we, any…how…”

He hadn’t really looked at the planet before. At first he was busy trying not to become an oversized meteor, then he’d been distracted by the radio, but now…

He knew the shapes of those continents. There were the blue oceans, the white clouds. This wasn’t just another Earthlike planet out in some far-flung galaxy.

This was Earth.

This was home.

 

* * *

 

The plan came together in his head as he was diving through the atmosphere, fire trailing in his wake. The lion was big, residential streets were small; he couldn’t exactly park close by. But there was the beach if nothing else, and his one-man speeder was roughly car-sized - definitely shorter and more maneuverable than some of the vehicles people drove around, like semis. It could take the roads no problem, and while it wasn’t as awesome as a flying blue robotic lion, it was still pretty cool stuff.

He’d roll up to the house ( _home_ ), knock on the door, spend a few hours (a day? Two? Hell, after the time he’s had, he deserves a vacation) soaking up affection from every single member of his extensive family (the little munchkins would _love_ Blue, he’d totally have to take them on a ride at some point, they already thought of him as their hero since he’d gone to Galaxy Garrison to become a pilot and now…god, they’d probably vibrate right out of their socks in sheer excitement, and that was an ego boost too adorable to pass up) and eating his mom’s cooking, his dad’s _baking_ , real Earth food (because while Hunk could do amazing things with alien plant matter, it just wasn’t the same)…and yeah, he might have to leave again sooner or later, but he figured that would be trouble for another day.

He figured wrong.

The beach was crowded with locals and tourists alike when he first swooped over it, looking for a clear space big enough for his Lion. By the time he touched down, they had all vanished, leaving scattered chairs, towels, and umbrellas littering the sand, and there was a traffic jam in the nearest parking lot.

“O-kay,” Lance muttered, staring out the Lion’s viewports at the fleeing populace. “I did _not_ think they’d react that way. Like, at all. We’re not _that_ scary, right Blue?”

Blue didn’t answer, but Keith’s annoying voice rose from Lance’s memory - “ _I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’re_ in _an alien warship.”_

“I guess you do have claws,” Lance muttered. “And you’re pretty huge. Still. _I_ didn’t run away screaming when we first met.”

The jam wasn’t improving. Some people had abandoned their vehicles and were booking it out on foot.

“Well, guess I’m off-roading it for a while. Got my ride prepped?”

Something beeped in minor alarm. A screen appeared on the dash - a zoomed in visual of an area further down the beach, tracking circles marking moving objects which clarified, with another zoom, into military-grade jeeps. In that moment, Lance remembered what had happened - nearly happened - to the last guy to show up on earth in an alien ship.

Then again, Shiro hadn’t exactly been calm or completely coherent at the time either. Maybe once you took away the element of ‘shell shocked survivor shouting that the aliens are coming’ everybody could stay cool and listen to reason.

“Uhhh…hey Blue? Do you have some kind of broadcast system that’ll let me talk to these guys, or is our communication equipment all fried somehow?”

Lance was grateful no one else was there, because he totally jumped when his helmet radio came live with a crackle of static. For a fraction of an instant he hoped his team had finally gotten through …

“ _\--ommand, have visual and will be in artillery range in three.”_

_“Copy that. Do not engage; stand by for air support and further backup.”_

…but the voices were wrong, the words were wrong, and, wow, Lance hadn’t realized how crisp and clear the sound quality was on Altean lines until he heard the background crackle and pop of Earth military radio again.

Still, it was contact.

“Hey, do you guys read me?”

For a moment, only white noise static played in Lance’s ears. Then, a faint voice: “ _What the f--”_

“All right, I’ll take that as a yes. Listen, don’t shoot: I come in peace and stuff. I’m not an alien, and I’m just dropping in for a visit, so if you don’t mind just letting me do that I’ll try to be out of your hair in…I don’t know, maybe a week?”

“ _Identify yourself,”_ barked another voice. The tone reminded Lance of literally ninety percent of Garrison command: _stand up straight, donkeys, I’m in charge here and you’re gonna remember that!_ He had very little doubt that this one was at least the leader of this particular company.

“Lance, Paladin of the Blue Lion of Voltron, and I know that probably doesn’t mean much to you, but trust me, it’s a big deal literally anywhere else in the universe.”

“ _State your purpose here.”_

“Look man, all I want is to visit my family. I’m _human_. I’m from around here. Could you just put the big guns down and let’s be civilized about this?”

The radio buzzed, another line opening up out there. They probably didn’t know that Blue was picking up more than the one channel.

“ _Command, this is team Alpha. Presumed pilot of the unidentified craft has opened contact with us. He claims to be a local human with peaceful intentions. What are your orders?”_

“ _Offer amnesty if he turns himself and his craft over to our custody. He’ll need to be quarantined and questioned to make sure his story checks out first, but if it does there’s a chance he’ll be given a gag order and released.”_

“I heard that!” Lance snapped. “What do you mean, _released_? I’m not some kind of criminal, I haven’t done anything wrong!”

“ _If that is the case there should be no trouble complying,”_ Command said. The Lion picked out more approaching dots, both on the ground and in the air. Script Lance couldn’t read scrolled next to the images, but he suspected he didn’t need to read it to know what it was analyzing; he could see the very big guns out there well enough on his own. “ _Exit your craft slowly and with your hands in full view.”_

“I just wanted to go home,” Lance said. His head was buzzing, numbing his thoughts. He didn’t know what else to say, what to do.

“ _Cooperate with us, and that might be possible. Exit the robot, now.”_

For a second, he considered it. Go with the flow, get to see his family eventually at least. How long could quarantine even last? A month, maybe? He’d been in space, faced with the terrifying prospect of _never_ for one reason or another, for a while now. He could deal with a month or whatever. But then another thought occurred to him.

“What about my Lion?”

_“That doesn’t matter. If you don’t come peaceably we have orders to take you by force. Do not test us.”_

But it did matter, because Lance had a gut feeling that if he walked out of Blue now, he’d never see the Lion again. It would be taken away, probably disassembled and reverse engineered if they could get through the particle barrier, locked up behind layers of black-ops-level security and clearances if not. There wouldn’t be a Blue Paladin free and fighting to save the universe alongside his trusty Lion, and if that were the case then the others wouldn’t be able to truly form Voltron ever again. He was their right leg; they couldn’t stand without him.

He had two families now, and while he wanted one with all his heart, there was a soul-deep bond he couldn’t break with the other, and they _needed_ him. Lance’s hands curled tighter around the controls. The Lion hummed around him.

“No. You guys really shouldn’t test _me_.”

They crouched - “ _Open fire!”_ crackled over the radio - and leapt up, and up, and up, out of ground range in a blink. Lance looked down, saw the arcing trail of missiles hurtling toward the place where his Lion had stood moments before, and felt strangely empty.

Aliens fired at him all the time now; that was just par for the Voltron Paladin course. Humans firing at him…all right, so objectively he knew that wasn’t entirely implausible, war had always been a thing that existed even without space aliens, but it just didn’t seem right. He was defending the universe for them, keeping all of them safe, and now they were literally gunning to kill or capture him and his Lion.

He still didn’t want to hurt them.

A helicopter came up from below, bullets pinging off of Blue’s armor plating; he’d held still too long. Lance looped away and out of range again; his Lion might’ve been larger and possibly less agile than Earth military aircraft, but for once this was a situation where he was unquestionably the fastest flier in the sky. They didn’t have a chance of catching him, especially once he jetted off into space--

He paused again, angled Blue’s head to get one last look at the blue oceans, the green grass, the white clouds, and yeah, there was the pizza shack over the water with their garlic knots, and only a short drive away he knew there was a familiar house filled with familiar people, none of them with the slightest clue how close he really was.

The choppers were coming back around again, getting closer fast. With a lump in his throat and the phantom sensation of warm arms surrounding him, Lance turned the Lion’s nose toward the blue, blue sky and hit the jets.

They were passing Jupiter when Lance found his voice again just long enough to say, “Well, that sucked.”

They were at the edge of the solar system when the first tears trickled down his face.

And his eyes were red-rimmed but dry again when he finally, finally heard Allura over the radio, calling him in, telling him to standby for a wormhole at his location to bring him back to the Castle and the rest of the team, asking where he had been.

“Just some random part of the galaxy,” he lied, and if anybody heard it in his voice or saw how close he was to Earth (lightyears away now, but within the same sector all the same), they didn’t bring it up.

He was grateful.

The wormhole opened, and the Blue Paladin returned home.


End file.
